Here's what's in your bottled water (Marketplace)

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[♪♪] David:<i> This is your</i> Marketplace. <i> What's lurking in your bottled water?</i> Man: Yeah, I see something-- one right in there. David:<i> Five top brands under the microscope.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> We've got 20 per cent of all the world's freshwater</i> <i> just in this country.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> But we spend over a billion</i> <i> every year on the bottled kind.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> So we're going shopping in four cities</i> <i> across Canada to test what exactly we're drinking.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David: Thank you. Can I ask you a quick question for<i> CBC?</i> It's about bottled water. <i> It's about bottled water.</i> It's about bottled water. <i> And we're asking why do we drink so much of it.</i> I'll take a bottle of water to work with me. A bottle of water, it's more convenient when I go out or I go to church. I love the taste of it. It has magnesium. I like to drink this one because I think this one is the safer water than the tap water. David: You think this is safer than the tap water? That's what I think, yes. I don't ever drink tap water. David: You don't ever drink tap water? - No. - David: Never ever ever? Never, ever, ever. David: Do you think this is cleaner than what comes out of the tap at your house? Yeah, I would think so. David:<i> But how pure is it?</i> <i> We're going to find out.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> While I'm in Toronto picking up some leading brands,</i> <i> colleagues are doing the same in Vancouver,</i> <i> Calgary, and Montreal.</i> <i> These are the top sellers in Canada,</i> <i> bottled in places like Aberfoyle, Ontario,</i> <i> and Hope, B.C., springing from municipal water sources</i> <i> in Vancouver, Peel, and Montreal.</i> <i> And from</i> Coca Cola<i> plants in Calgary and Brampton.</i> <i> Some of it comes from the foot of the Laurentians and remote</i> <i> streams in western Quebec.</i> <i> It's all ending up here at McGill University at a lab that</i> <i> specializes in water quality protection.</i> <i> Nathalie Tufenkji and her team are going to try to figure</i> <i> out if bottled water is as pure as the marketing suggests.</i> David: So we've brought you bottles of water from different places across the country, different brands. How long does it take to actually do all that testing? It's definitely going to take us several weeks. We're going to add a dye to each bottle. <i> We're going to filter that water and then we're gonna look</i> <i> at it under the microscope.</i> David:<i> We have asked them to look for any signs</i> <i> of plastic contamination.</i> <i> Especially microplastics, small pieces of plastic debris</i> <i> in our environment, all there because of all of us,</i> <i> like when we wash our clothes and they shed plastic fibres.</i> <i> The daily wear and tear from our tires,</i> <i> the break down of bottles and bags,</i> <i> trillions of tiny particles causing some very big worries.</i> [ ♪♪ ] Pretty cool, hey? David:<i> Cool looking.</i> <i> But this sculpture at Toronto's Union Station</i> <i> puts things into perspective.</i> <i> It's made up of 12,000 bottles, the same amount thrown out</i> <i> every four minutes in Ontario alone.</i> <i> Much of it ends up in the world's waters.</i> <i> In 30 years, they say, there will be more plastics</i> <i> in the ocean than fish.</i> [ ♪♪ ] [ Crowd Noise ] There's a shark! Whoa! David:<i> Kids are learning about our impact on marine life</i> <i> here at Ripley's Aquarium in downtown Toronto.</i> Child:<i> Look at those two sharks!</i> David:<i> It's an amazing setting to underscore</i> <i> what's at stake.</i> [ Crowd Noise ] It's actually really bad for animals. Does anyone know what that is? - Plastic. - That's right. Plastic is the most dangerous form of litter. David:<i> They hear how plastic could be making its way</i> <i> through the food chain.</i> Remember, who eats fish? We eat fish. Do you think the fish we eat have plastic in them? David:<i> Makes you wonder, what about the water we drink?</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> I catch up with Ripley's diving</i> <i> team to hear more.</i> I haven't been diving in a few years. - It will all come back to me. - It's been a while. David:<i> They have experienced first-hand the threats</i> <i> plastics pose in the wild.</i> Have you ever seen plastics in the water? I have. Unfortunately, even in the most remote places that you think you're far away from all the lands, of all the populations, you will still find plastic, unfortunately. [ ♪♪ ] [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> Are we really ready to trade all this for convenience?</i> <i> We're buying more bottled water than ever before.</i> <i> How did we get so supersized on plastic?</i> <i> So plasticized.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> To find out, I'm hitting the bottled water aisle</i> <i> with Allison Hunt.</i> So you have done every kind of marketing for every kind of product, seemingly? Every-- every aisle of the store. David: Every aisle of the store? Every aisle, yeah. David:<i> She's a consumer researcher and former</i> <i> advertising exec who helped launch bottled water</i> <i> into Canada in the '80s.</i> David: Now that you've done that, what do you think of it? I think if we knew then what we know know we wouldn't have been as excited to work on the product. David: Now, what does that mean? Well, now we're in a different climate. I don't think bottled water today would be launched. I can't imagine the meeting. They would be like, what if we put tap water in bottles. David:<i> The rise of bottled water can be traced to the late</i> <i> '70s and this ad campaign for Perrier.</i> Man:<i> Deep below the plains of southern France in a--</i> David:<i> Perrier spent millions convincing us its bottles were</i> <i> not only filled with purity, but sophistication and class.</i> Man:<i> --and therefore more quenching.</i> David:<i> Allison Hunt's team took a similar path.</i> The campaign that was launching the bottled water brand was about purity. Once that was established, then it was to make it a badge product that you looked kind of cool drinking. Really no one was drinking bottled water. And so the second campaign was about just putting the bottles in situations with interesting looking people who just so happened to have a bottle of water with them. David:<i> Big water is still pushing the purity angle</i> <i> in TV commercials and on social media.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> And on their own labels.</i> <i> They pay big bucks to get those front</i> <i> and centre in convenient places.</i> Funny thing is, in some cases, the water we buy practically is tap. Dasani, for instance, acknowledges it uses local water supplies, while Aquafina's label says public water sources. It's then filtered to become 'the taste of purity.' While their profits are sure pure because we regularly pay dollars for something that costs them pennies to produce. It's been called the marketing trick of the century. Would you agree with that? Well, in a way, yes, because it could come out of your tap and you could put it in a bottle. But you pay really high margins on it. David: You know, on some level, it doesn't seem rational. - Who said people are rational? - David: Yeah. Marketing serves to rationalize behaviours. David: To give you the sense this is a good idea. This is what you should do. Yeah, or you-- This is a weird sentence, but, you shouldn't not do it. David: You shouldn't not do it. Right, it's like, why not? Water's good for you. That's the paradox of bottled water is that, what's in the bottle is so good for you and the package it comes in is so bad for the environment. [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> We're at McGill University in Montreal</i> <i> where they're testing top brands of bottled water.</i> <i> Nathalie Tufenkji and her team have been searching</i> <i> for signs of microplastics.</i> <i> A special dye is mixed into the water,</i> <i> then carefully filtered.</i> <i> The aim is to catch any foreign particles like plastic.</i> [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> From there, a microscope and some</i> <i> CSI-type equipment try to pinpoint the particles.</i> You should be able to see some particles by eye. David: Oh, yeah, yeah. I see someone right in there. Yeah, and there's another one there. [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> And finally, using liquid nitrogen and a plastic</i> <i> detection machine, they analyse the particles.</i> That little tip there is going to be right on top of the particle. David: It's going to touch the particle? Yes. David: And then it can tell you what it is? Exactly. David:<i> A waveform is created, which is then matched</i> <i> to known plastics.</i> <i> The verdict?</i> This graph of this particle shows us these three peaks which are very characteristic of polyethylene terephthalate which is the material of the plastic bottle. - David: PET? - PET. David: We asked you to look to see if there are plastics or particles in this water. What did you find? So what we were able to show is that of the 50 bottles that we tested, 30 of them, we were able to identify that there was plastic. David: The majority of them? <i> The top chart shows particles above 100 microns.</i> How big is that? 100 microns is about the size, the width of a human hair. David: So it's pretty small. <i> But big enough to identify many of the particles.</i> We know that there are different types of plastics. So, for example, we found rayon, which is a material used in clothing. And we found polyethylene which is a material used for making plastic bottles or caps. David:<i> Surprisingly, they even found plastic in</i> the glass bottles they tested. This company sells water in both bottles in plastic and glass. Exactly. David: And it still got plastic in the glass one... Exactly. David: ..although in lower levels. Yeah, it could be coming from the source. It could be coming in the bottling process itself, maybe from the air. [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> The question of how particles get into bottled</i> <i> water is just one of many mysteries</i> <i> surrounding this story.</i> <i> For instance, the bottom chart shows even tinier particles</i> <i> below 100 microns.</i> <i> And there are many more of them in every bottle.</i> <i> But why? And what are they?</i> Yeah, these super tiny ones, I mean, 2,250 in one bottle. 1,100 in another. Do we know if any of them are plastic? So, we were able to show using a very specialized technique that some of these particles are, in fact, plastic. We don't know how many of them. We can indeed say now that some of these particles are plastic. David:<i> It's preliminary but tiny plastic particles are</i> <i> in at least one of the bottles.</i> <i> Bigger plastics in 30 of them.</i> <i> As for all the other particles they found...</i> If they're not plastics, then what could they be? Well, there could be organic matter that's present in the source water. It could be dust that potentially gets into the bottle because dust would contain different organic components. David: All of the five brands that we tested sent written statements stressing how seriously they take food safety, quality control, and filtration. Most of them acknowledge that microplastics are everywhere now and say they want to be part of the solution. <i> Bottom line, they say, their water is safe.</i> <i> If microplastics are everywhere,</i> <i> including bottled water, it begs the question,</i> <i> what could that be doing to us?</i> <i> For answers, we're at the University of Toronto</i> <i> inside a lab run by Chelsea Rochman.</i> We humans are living in this big experience right now. David:<i> She's an ecologist who researches plastic pollution.</i> <i> More often than not, microplastics.</i> <i> Where are we seeing them?</i> Started out in the middle of the ocean. Now we see them in lakes, in rivers, in bays. We see them in our seafood. We see them in animals at every level of the food chain. David: Should we, as humans, be concerned? So for human health we really don't know. The theory is that this is dependent on size. If a particle is less than 150 micron, evidence suggests that they might leave our gut and head into different organs, different parts of our body. David: And we are seeing particles of that size. When we have fed microplastics to animals, we have found things like liver toxicity, so the beginning of tumour promotion, in the liver of a fish that's been exposed to microplastics for two months. But, when it comes to humans, we just don't know. David:<i> Rochman says much more study is needed and soon.</i> For me, it's something showing us that the mismanagement of our waste and our large use of materials is coming back to haunt us in our own food and on our own dinner plates so hopefully that's enough for people to listen, to have some sort of wake up call, to rethink the materials that we use and rethink our waste management system. [ ♪♪ ] David:<i> Back at Ripley's Aquarium where</i> <i> bottled water is never sold, school kids take</i> <i> a lunch break, and drink only from refillables.</i> <i> You have a plastic water bottle?</i> Who has a reusable one? You have got a reusable one there. What's good about a reusable bottle? Just say it. You don't have to-- it won't go in the water. It's not made of oil. It's not made of oil. You can reuse it. David: You can reuse it? - You don't just throw it away? - Just wash it! David: What do you think we can do about all of these plastics that are in our world? Yeah, go ahead. We could remake them into reusable stuff. David: Yeah, we can try to recycle them. What else? Don't use so much plastic bags and start using containers. David: There you go. Maybe that's the key. Maybe the key is just use less plastic or try to use as little as possible. Right? <i> We all hear that.</i> <i> And now know we're even drinking plastic from plastic.</i> <i> The kids have stopped.</i> <i> Maybe it's time for the rest of us to take a lesson from them.</i> [ ♪♪ ] In a world where it's getting tougher to tell the difference between a real deal and a real scam... These companies are scammers. <i> Where it feels like big business is against us.</i> [ Crowd Noise ] A world full of terms and conditions. The debt just keeps on piling on and it's very dangerous. We got you. We're going to pay them a visit. Ask in person. Are you ripping people off? Don't you think you're breaking the trust of your clients? And we're digging deep, getting you results. Some of these dealers can be real sharks. Information from that, I walked in there. Boom, boom, boom, resolved. As a kid I grew up watching<i> CBC</i> "Marketplace." Saw your episode on Fast Fashion. And as an adult, I never miss an episode. I just wanna thank you for the work that you do. Thanks very much "Marketplace." Thank you so much "Marketplace." <i> You like us.</i> <i> But what do you think we should investigate next?</i> The price of cellphones. More on the insurance. Insurance. The scams at the mechanics. <i> Send us your emails, your tweets,</i> <i> find us on</i> Facebook. <i> We want to hear from you.</i> This is my "Marketplace." This is my "Marketplace." This is my "Marketplace." [ ♪♪ ]
Info
Channel: CBC News
Views: 3,539,025
Rating: 4.6982694 out of 5
Keywords: Here's what's in your bottled water, bottled water, lurking, Marketplace, lab, test, five, top-selling, brands, Canada, microplastics, CBC, CBC News
Id: I75qa0kTeY4
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)
Published: Fri Apr 06 2018
Reddit Comments

Don’t have a spare 17 mins... was it anything exciting?

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/redditusername374 📅︎︎ Apr 08 2018 🗫︎ replies

That's why I produce my own water.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/Peace_Is_Coming 📅︎︎ Apr 08 2018 🗫︎ replies

This guy seems to believe that they just put tap water in the bottles and then $$$

I been to water plants, its a very complicated and expensive process to filter and purify water.

And most bottles are bought when there is no other alternative, such as during work, eating out in restaurants or mcdonalds.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/OldMork 📅︎︎ Apr 08 2018 🗫︎ replies

That’s ok I drink from the tap.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/bmg16 📅︎︎ Apr 08 2018 🗫︎ replies
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